Seven Skype Alternatives

Skype isn’t the only game in town! Other Internet telephony providers are even cheaper than Skype for some types of calls. You can mix and match alternatives to Skype to get the overall best deal. Don’t be afraid to shop around for the best deal. Using the tips that follow, and by searching using an Internet search engine such as Google (using search terms such as “VoIP” and “softphone”), you will quickly find plenty—and in some cases cheaper—alternatives to Skype. However, a few words of caution. When considering alternatives to Skype, be sure to consider issues such as voice quality (Skype’s voice quality is very good), privacy, security, ease of use, support for advanced features such as video and chat, and software and hardware compatibility with your PC.
To get you started, here are some alternatives to Skype:

􀁕 www.voipstunt.com is a softphone that you install on your PC which allows you to make free calls to other VoIPStunt users. In addition, it allows you to make free calls to regular landline phones in several countries, including the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. Even more amazing is the fact that you can also call mobile phones for free in some of these countries, including the United States and China. More amazing still is that you can get a free regular dial-in number, although the list of countries for which you can get them is more restricted.
􀁕 www.voipbuster.com offers free calls to regular landline phone numbers in the following countries: Andorra, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Georgia, Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Monaco, Mongolia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Panama, Peru, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Singapore, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, and Venezuela. Like VoIPStunt, VoIPBuster offers free regular dial-in numbers for some countries. Check the VoIPBuster website for details and restrictions.
􀁕 www.gizmoproject.com is a softphone with features and services that are very similar to Skype.
􀁕 www.freeworlddialup.com is a service that is based on open standards and so can work with different softphones. It offers free softphone-to-softphone calls, and free calls to some regular phones.
􀁕 www.google.com/talk is a softphone from the folks at Google. It enables you to speak for free with other Google Talk users, and supports instant message chat. Unlike Skype, you can use Google Talk to chat with other chat message client programs.
􀁕 messenger.yahoo.com is an instant messaging chat client that also supports free PC-to-PC voice calls. It also offers low perminute rates for calls to regular phones.
􀁕 messenger.msn.com is a softphone that supports voice calls, video, and chat messaging.

Money Saving Advices on Skype

In addition to reducing the per-minute cost of your calls and reducing or eliminating fixed charges and taxes, there are other money-saving strategies you can employ by using Skype. I’ll skip the fatuous advice, such as “make fewer calls,” or “use e-mail instead,” because this chapter is about saving money by using Skype, or alternatives to Skype. Though I must say, “make fewer calls” has worked wonders in my family, and was accompanied by a family-wide sigh of relief!

Remember that you can call anyone who uses Skype for free. That means that if you convince people you call frequently, such as family members, friends, and even business contacts, to join Skype, you could save a lot of money. For example, suppose you spent $50 last year speaking to Uncle Tom on a land line. This year, however, you both decide to join Skype. That means you’ll save $50 this coming year, and each and every year beyond that. Indeed, you needn’t watch the clock any longer, and so can speak with Uncle Tom more often and for longer. In short, the more people you convert to Skype, the more money you will save.

Using Skype, you can even reduce the regular phone bills of others. You can do this by subscribing to one or more SkypeIn numbers.

How you do this is best illustrated using an example. Suppose you live in Baltimore, but have a lot of friends and family in London, England. By choosing a London number for SkypeIn, those same friends and family can call you in Baltimore for the cost of a local call—instead of an international call. Indeed, you can have several dial-in numbers (up to 10) dotted around the globe. Friends and family anywhere can then call what is a local number for them at their local rate (sometimes for free), and these calls will then be routed for free (courtesy of the Skype P2P network) to wherever you happen to be signed in to Skype. This way, friends and family can save money by calling your SkypeIn numbers at their local rates, while you can receive such calls anywhere on the planet!

Of course, this strategy will save money for others but not for you, as you will have to pay to subscribe to SkypeIn numbers. But think of all the goodwill it will buy you!

Saving on Taxes and Fixed Charge

The only really meaningful way to attack your fixed charges and taxes is to eliminate one or more phone lines. For example, suppose you have two telephone lines, and your monthly fixed charges and taxes are $50. If you eliminate one telephone line and replace the other with Skype, you will save about $25 a month on fixed costs alone.
The bottom line is this: you can’t start attacking fixed charges and taxes unless you can shed phone lines. If you are able to eliminate one or more lines, sum all the monthly fixed charges and taxes on your phone bill, and then divide that sum by the number of phone lines you have. This will give you the fixed charges and taxes per phone line per month. For each phone line you can eliminate, you will save about that much money, every month.

Determining Saving on Cost of Skype Calls

Look at your most recent phone bill, or bills, as maybe you have both a regular phone and mobile phone. Or better yet, if you still have them, gather several months’ worth of bills. From your itemized list of calls, pick out the 10 most expensive calls.
Now go to the Skype Dialing Wizard at www.skype.com/products/ skypeout/rates/dialing.html, and for each call you have chosen, enter the telephone number and note down the per-minute call rate that the Skype Dialing Wizard gives you. An example of how to get the per minute call rate for a specific number, using the Skype Dialing Wizard, is as shown in the following figure.
Next, round the call duration of each of your chosen calls so that they’re expressed in whole minutes. For example, round a 45-second call up to 1 minute, and round a 5-minute, 25-second call up to 6 minutes. Now multiply these whole-minute call durations by the corresponding SkypeOut call rates you obtained from the Skype Dialing Wizard. Compare these totals with the actual cost of each of the calls on your phone bill. If your calculated numbers are less than your actual numbers from your phone bill, you would have saved money using Skype. And, provided your calling habits don’t change much, you will most likely save money if you use Skype in the future. It’s as simple as that. Keep in mind that there’s no concept of local, long distance, interstate, or international calling in Skype. All call rates are global rates, in the sense that a SkypeOut call rate for a particular destination is good when dialing from anywhere on the planet. If you make a lot of local, toll-free calls—calls that are not itemized on your regular phone bill—then making these calls using Skype will cost you money. Toll-free local calls become toll calls when dialed from Skype. This should be factored into your cost-saving calculations. To estimate your cost of local calls if you were to fully switch to Skype, estimate your monthly minutes of local calling and multiply that number by the SkypeOut rate for your locality (country code plus area code). There’s nothing stopping you from keeping a regular phone for local calls and switching only your long distance and international calls to Skype.

Economic Considerations on Skype

Your regular and mobile phone bill is normally made up of two parts: cost of calls, and fixed charges and taxes. You can use Skype to reduce the overall cost of your phone calls, and reduce—in some cases even eliminate—your fixed charges and taxes.
The cost of an individual call is the duration of the call, measured in minutes (and sometimes fractions thereof), multiplied by the call rate. For example, a 7 minute call at a call rate of 5 cents per minute will cost you 35 cents. The lower the call rate for a given destination, the lower your cost of calls to that destination. You can use Skype’s very low per minute call rates to save money on your overall cost of calls.
Over the years, most people have seen their phone bills accumulate lots of fixed charges and taxes. Indeed, before I switched to Skype, fixed charges and taxes amounted to 56 percent of my regular telephone bill! Some taxes relate to your cost of calls and so decline as your cost of calls decrease. But most are truly fixed, in the sense that even if you don’t make a single call during any given month, you still have to pay them. To eliminate the fixed charges and taxes, you’d need to reduce the number of phone lines entering your home or eliminate them altogether. By using Skype you can do this and so avoid many fixed charges and taxes—and it’s all legal!

Connecting Skype Access Point

Once you’ve located an access point, it’s time to connect to Skype Zones. First, make sure you are running the Skype Zones client program (Start: All Programs: Skype Zones: Skype Zones). When you run
Skype Zones and are in range of a Skype Zones access point, a window should pop up that invites you to sign in to the Skype Zones network. Alternatively, you can open the Skype Zones client (right-click on the Skype Zones icon in the Windows system tray and choose Open Skype Zones), and then click on the link Available Signals.
This should display the Available Wireless Networks page in the Skype Zones client. To connect to a specific access point, simply click on the blue Connect button opposite the desired wireless network name. To disconnect, just click on the green Connected button. If the wireless access point is part of the Skype Zones network, you will be prompted to sign in when you connect. Once connected, your online status in the Skype softphone will change to Online and you can start using Skype as you would from any regular Internet connection.

Finding Skype Zones Access Point

To use the Skype Zones client program to search for access points, first open the client by going to Start: All Programs: Skype Zones: Skype Zones. Next, click on the link Find A Location, which displays a search page, as shown in the figure. Frankly, the only advantage of using the search facility in the Skype Zones client program is that it works even when you are not connected to the Internet (the list of available access points is downloaded to your PC and is periodically updated). However, it doesn’t always have the most up-to-date list of available access points.